MSN Takes on Google AdWords

kevmo writes "CNET News.com reports that Microsoft's MSN unit launched its own paid-search advertising program in France and said it plans to begin testing the system in the United States next month. FTA: "The system competes with Google's AdWords program and will eventually replace a keyword-based advertising program MSN contracts out to Yahoo. It has a simple user interface and is notable for its use of customer profiling, taking advantage of the data MSN gathers from its more than 9 million subscribers.""

Comments

I use AdWords on a few websites...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

What's in it for me to switch to MSN's?

Re:I use AdWords on a few websites...

[lucabrasi999]

What's in it for me to switch to MSN's?

Quality and Security.

Re:I use AdWords on a few websites...

[ThaFooz]

I use AdWords on a few websites... What's in it for me to switch to MSN's?

Well, I'm unsure if you mean you advertise on a few websites or put ads on your your own websites for revenue. But, I've done a lot of work in the industry so here goes:

Google and Yahoo have a roughly equal share of the keyword-based advertising market (roughly 45% a piece), and most of the traffic comes from their own search engines, not their content network. The launch of MSN's program will imediatley cut into Yahoo's share (as current MSN ads are contracted to them), not Google's. It's hard to predict just how much though - Microsoft's search engine is less popular with a smaller index (and technicaly inferior IMHO), but Microsfot is pushing it pretty hard, and they own a fair number of hugely popular sites (MSNBC, Hotmail, ect). If you're targeting a specific demographic or website owned by MS, you'll have to consider them. But I don't see the major distributions out there flocking to an unproven system by a fairly new player to the search industry.

Between Google and Yahoo, I don't see overall differences in advertiser/advertisee ROI, but the two systems work slightly differently and could be quite different to a smaller operation. Where you place in Yahoo is based on how much you're willing to spend, where placement in Google is determined by a combination of the traffic you generate and your bid.

Bottom line, if you're only toying with AdWords at the moment, I wouldn't bother with MSN until you've experimented with Yahoo.

Re:I use AdWords on a few websites...

[mat1t]

Surely you don't want to switch, you want to use both! Thereby increasing the amount of adverts your product has! :)

France?

[bugbeak]

Not to try to inflame any French /.tter, and I don't know much about the French, but wouldn't there be a significant difference between how the French or Americans surf? Like the kinds of stuff they look for, etc.

Just wondering why MS would test-run in France instead of some fixed part of the US.

Re:France?

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't there be a significant difference between how the French or Americans surf?

From my proxy logs: pr0n, ebay, pr0n, holiday travel companies, pr0n, webmails, pr0ns. Oh, and some work-related sites, like journal-officiel.gouv.fr or sante.gouv.fr. About 4% of the traffic. No, I don't think there's that much difference.

Re:France?

[Absentminded-Artist]

Didn't Google have high profile legal troubles with France? 1 2 and the famous 3 Perhaps MSFT chose France because it seems the less Google-happy place on earth.

MSN AdCenter

[NoInfo]

The actual URL to Microsoft's MSN AdCenter:

adcenter.msn.com

Re:MSN AdCenter

[ednopantz]

One should note that you need an invitation.

Healthy competition

[SumDog]

You know, I am annoyed by the onslaught of Google articles on here, but maybe there are so many articles because they are great innovators. Google doesn't necessarally makes new software, but take an old idea and make it much better, or work in a different way that may or may not be more efficient.

People complain about Google possibly turning into another Microsoft, but I say that may not be a bad thing. Two giants with totally different ideas about engineering, research and design are now trying to grab a hold onto the same markets. There are similarities too; both companies to a lot of live testing with their consumers.

My revenue on google Adwords hasn't been all that great, so at least now if I desired, I could try a different option from a major provider. I like this and I'd hope to see more healthy competition between Google and Microsoft.

Re:Healthy competition

[sedyn]

The thing I fear most about google is that it may dominate the online services world and gain a monopoly position. Which is why most people fear it becoming like microsoft (as far as I've seen).

The reason for this fear is two-fold, but both reasons stem from resources.

In my opinion, a company is too powerful when we have the hypothetical situation that if their "IP" and/or physical assets are taken away, but not the talents of their staff, that they could not hope to compete with their previous work.

Or to state it simpler, when the hardware/software + "IP-rights" are greater than the employees.

A good example of this would be when Steve Jobs created Next with some of the best people from Apple. Another would be to imagine microsoft without the rights to the office formats or windows APIs.

In the case of Google I see two things that would/will qualify them in this category.

1) Hardware, the hardware to run a search engine is quite expensive.
2) Ad revenue connections, imagine getting your foot in the door if you are competing against Google.

The question that I pose now is, "Can an open source project, resembling google, have a chance against google?" As long as the answer to that is yes, I have no problem with them. But it is my fear that in the future, the answer will be no. (I feel that google can still be wiped off the 'net)

Maybe the creation of a "Free Services Foundation" may be required, assuming one does not already exist. Where hardware and bandwidth is provided (I suppose sourceforge would be a good example, but it is only a start)

Pay-per-click?

[BenjyD]

I wonder if better ad-targeting will mean higher pay-per-click for the publishers? Not that anyone will dare discuss their Adsense earnings, for fear of having their account cancelled.

Re:Pay-per-click?

[ChrisF79]

I have Adsense on my small site and what is frustrating for me isn't the earnings but the lack of consistency. Sometimes I'll have one click that pays more than the 15 clicks the day before. It is very hit or miss with Google. I'd love to see MSN provide a more consistent income stream or at least something I can understand. I see how people bid on the ads and so they're clearly going to have different earnings, but the disparity between them really astounds me. Just my $0.02.

Re:Pay-per-click?

[harvardian]

I've always wondered why Google's black box approach to AdSense didn't tip off people's evil-meter. That sort of opacity would never in a million years be tolerated from Microsoft, especially when it comes to money.

It may just be that there's no real competition, so they can take advantage of their mono...uhh...I mean, "reap the benefits of their innovation".

The Matrix...

[Stanistani]

>taking advantage of the data MSN gathers from its more than 9 million subscribers

We're not going to be farmed for energy by soulless machines...

We're going to be farmed for our metadata by soulless corporations!

I feel so much better now.

Its inevitable

[zappepcs]

Despite my normal anti-Microsoft stance on the world in general, this type of information usage is going to happen no matter what we as users want. The worst case is the governments of the world using personally identifying information in similar kinds of ways.

Since I don't think it can be stopped any easier than spam-email can be stopped altogether, I want to make my online profile seem as non-descript as possible. That is to say that I don't want to be part of a 'demographic'. That probably means I'll get lumped in with people that buy things I don't want or am allergic to. This is all the more reason to not use MSN... to avoid becoming a user in a demographic. We don't allow the government to use racial profiling... this is just cyber profiling in my opinion, and far worse that standard advertisement campaigns.

Of course the French will have differing demographic and cyber values than people in North America... we won't be looking to buy white flags :)

Despite the jokes, does anyone know of software or companies that specifically work to help a user maintain anonymity in the face of this type of information usage?

Might be a good option?

[seanvaandering]

I have an adwords account as well, one of the possibilities might be that the MSN market would generate more revenue? Consider that the users who use Google might be smarter than the ones on MSN due to the fact that those people who don't know how to change the default homepage after installing windows might be a viable market to advertise to :)

Whoa, whoa, hold up now.

[Pichu0102]

It has a simple user interface and is notable for its use of customer profiling, taking advantage of the data MSN gathers from its more than 9 million subscribers.

Does this mean that people logged into their .NET Passports will have the data taken from the passports in order to serve more relevant ads? If so, does this mean that web site owners will have the ability to look and see what data the .NET Passports hold?

Innovative

[sxmjmae]

Good to see Microsoft is still Innovative.
Surprising for such monolithic company to still have new and fresh ideas.
You would think a large company, like Microsoft, would use it position to exert pressure to adopt their services.

Perfect.

[Sialagogue]

Finally, click fraud victim we can all feel good about. . .

Re:Perfect.

[krunk4ever]

the victims are the advertisers and Microsoft in this situation would actually be making more money. if they do catch you, MS still has nothing to lose besides helping advertisers gain confidence in MSN click fraud detection.

Microsoft's Statement on Innovation ...

[joelsanda]

At Microsoft, we see a future full of potential. We're working to expand the possibilities for computing every day, by continually improving and advancing our current products and embarking on fundamental research that paves the way for tomorrow's breakthroughs. Through partnerships with universities, governments, and other companies, Microsoft is working to push the state of the art forward in ways that benefit everyone.

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/innovation/

One way that MSN can beat adwords

[wackysootroom]

Adwords used to be a great thing for small-time advertisers and that's precisely the reason that myself and many other small advertisers like me used adwords. I could reach thousands on a budget of less than $100 a day.

Google changed their minimum-bid policy and now I have to end up paying $10 a click for some keywords and no less than $1 to get on the first result page for others. I used to get up near the top for less than .20 on many of my keywords. Not anymore. I can't afford $5-10 a click so I cancelled my adwords campaigns. Judging by some of the angry threads at webmaster world I'm guessing that there's hundreds of others out there like me. Maybe Google just needs something to show for thier inflated stock price.

If MSN can offer a decent amount of quality traffic for a good CPC I'll jump all over it.